You never know what you're going to get on a college visit. Sometimes it's the campus -- rolling green lawns and ivy-covered buildings with history dating to the formation of the republic. Or it's fascinating students who share a voracious desire to learn with an entertaining ability to communicate just that. Or it's a terrible lunch, a Valley Girl tour guide and a neighborhood that would scare a Guardian Angel.

What you don't expect is for a class to break out in the middle of a promotional message.

David Bosco

But that's just what happened last week at American University in Washington, D.C. A compelling character named David Bosco, a lawyer by trade but a citizen of the world by nature, took the stage to show what the learning experience is like at this university where he now teaches in the School of International Service. And the guy was great -- engaging, funny, energetic and, as advertisements for schools go, first rate.

His thing was the United Nations, about which he's writing a book. He got us there by getting the high-schoolers in attendance to begin by defining anarchy, then moving toward order, although there are certain ironies about the U.N. ending up on the order side of the spectrum.

And there he was recently in Africa, he told us, touring with the U.N. Security Council, as a fouled up plane trip out of the Congo left some of the most important people in the world seeking a restroom in Rwanda after imbibing a bit too much from a bottle of vodka provided by the Russian delegation. That in itself may be the very definition of anarchy, although Bosco's eventual point was order.

But the message that struck home for me -- amidst all the educating entertainment and tidbits such as the American and Chinese ambassadors taking to dressing the same and hanging out together -- is while the Security Council met only occasionally during the Cold War days, members talk almost daily now. So even though the world may seem a mess, the people we would hope could solve said messes actually are comfortable talking with each other.

That, despite the U.N.'s apparent powerlessness in many instances -- Bosco conveniently talked about Iraq War I, but not Iraq War II, for example -- shows potential.

And that's what I took away from a day at American, campus number, well, I've lost count over the years. But if all the teachers are like David Bosco, perhaps American will be the right place for Kid No. 3.